CARRIER BILLING GUIDE

Detention pay for carriers: how to bill it and get paid

By Recover Freight · Published October 13, 2026 · Updated October 13, 2026

Detention is the time your driver waits at a shipper or receiver after the free time in your agreement has run out, and the detention fee is what you charge for it. Whether that charge is billable depends on your agreement and on whether you can prove how long the wait was. Most carriers already bill the trucking detention they notice. The harder parts are proving it well enough to get paid, and catching the loads where nobody flagged the wait.

This guide covers what to check in the rate confirmation, what evidence to capture at the dock, how to put the charge on the invoice, and what to do if it is disputed. It is written for Ontario and Canada-US truckload carriers, but the mechanics apply anywhere.

Detention is a contract term, not a given

What you can charge is set by your agreement, not by how long the driver waited. For a brokered load, the rate confirmation (and any broker-carrier agreement it refers to) is usually where the terms live. For a direct shipper, it may be the shipper's contract or routing guide. If the documents are silent on detention, your position is weaker, and that is worth knowing before the load, not after.

The US Department of Transportation's Inspector General made a related point in 2018: most industry stakeholders measure only the time at a facility beyond the limit set in shipping contracts, and available electronic data cannot readily tell detention apart from normal loading and unloading. In practice, a claim rests on the contract term and on your own timestamps. This guide is general information, not legal advice.

Check these items in the rate confirmation for every customer you haul for:

• Free time. How many hours are included, and whether loading and unloading are treated the same.
• When the clock starts. Your arrival time, the appointment time, or whichever is later.
• The rate and the increments. The hourly amount, and whether time is rounded to the quarter hour, half hour or full hour.
• Any cap. A maximum per stop, per day or per load.
• Notice requirements. Whether you must tell the broker or dispatcher when detention starts, and how.
• The billing deadline. Some agreements require detention to be claimed within a set window, or submitted with the invoice.
• Required proof. Which documents the broker will accept, such as signed in and out times.

Not every agreement has all of these, and the wording differs from one broker to the next. The point is to know what each of your customers actually requires, instead of assuming one standard.

What to capture at the dock

Timestamps are what most detention claims rest on. Where you can, aim for two independent records of when the driver arrived and when the truck left:

• Signed in and out times on the BOL or POD, written by the facility, not estimated by the driver afterward.
• Appointment time, as shown on the rate confirmation or the appointment confirmation.
• Electronic records. ELD or GPS location history showing arrival at the facility, plus any check-in message or gate log.
• Notification. A time-stamped message to the broker or dispatcher when free time ran out, if your agreement asks for one.
• The reason for the delay, when the facility caused it. Not ready to load, no door available and a late unload are common examples.

The best place to start is the driver's routine at the dock: a photo of the signed paperwork and a quick message when free time ends. It takes a minute and it is the difference between a charge you can bill and a charge you only suspect.

Cross-border loads: two details to check

On Canada-US loads, note which time zone each recorded time is in, since a load can cross zones between the shipper and the receiver. Also confirm which currency the detention rate is quoted in before you invoice, so the amount matches what the agreement says.

A worked example (hypothetical)

The numbers below are made up to show the arithmetic. Your free time and rate will differ.

Now suppose that load went out at the base rate only, because the dock times were not in front of whoever cut the invoice. The $187.50 does not appear anywhere and nobody disputes it. A carrier with a solid billing process will catch most of these, but a miss like this is only visible if someone compares the dock times against the rate confirmation.

Here is a second version of the same load. Assume the agreement also says the driver must message the broker when free time ends, and that detention must be submitted within 30 days of delivery. If no message was sent, or the claim goes in on day 31, the same $187.50 is much easier to refuse, because the broker can point to the agreement. The wait was real, but the paperwork did not meet the terms.

How to put it on the invoice

• Bill detention as its own line item, separate from linehaul and fuel.
• Show the working: arrival, end of free time, departure, billable hours and the rate.
• Cite the rate confirmation term it comes from.
• Attach the signed BOL or POD and any notification messages.
• Send it within the billing window your agreement sets, ideally with the original invoice.

A charge that is clear, documented and on time is much harder to push back on than a late email that says the driver waited a while.

If the broker pushes back

• Ask which term or document the dispute rests on: free time, when the clock started, missing notice or missing proof.
• Resubmit with the missing evidence attached, referring to the same rate confirmation term.
• Point out when the facility, not your driver, caused the delay.
• Check whether your agreement makes the broker's payment depend on the shipper paying them, and whether any shipper deadline has passed.
• Keep a dated record of every follow-up.

A dispute is much easier to answer when the evidence from the dock is already in the load file.

How common detention is, and how often it goes unpaid

The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) published research in September 2024 covering 2023 for-hire trucking in the United States. It found that drivers reported being detained at 39.3 percent of all stops. It also found that 94.5 percent of fleets charge detention fees, but that they are paid on fewer than 50 percent of those invoices.

That is US data, so treat it as context rather than a forecast for your Ontario lanes. The useful part is the gap: most fleets bill detention, but fewer than half of those invoices are paid. ATRI does not break down why. Documentation is one of the few causes you control, which is why most of this guide is about it. Some detention may also never reach an invoice at all, and you can only find that by checking your own records.

Ways detention can get missed

Even carriers with a solid billing process can miss detention on individual loads. These are some of the ways it happens:

• An invoice can be generated from the rate confirmation at delivery, before the dock times are known.
• The proof can sit in different places: the BOL, the ELD, a text from the driver.
• A closed load may have nobody responsible for going back to check it.
• The billing window can pass before anyone notices.

Check your own loads

A simple test is to pull 30 to 50 recently closed loads, compare the dock times on each BOL against the free time in its rate confirmation, and see which loads had billable detention that never reached the invoice. If you find a pattern, fix the routine. If you find nothing, your process is working.

Doing that by hand takes time, and it has to be repeated. Recover Freight automates it. You send the rate confirmation, POD/BOL and final invoice for each load, and we check them against each other, flag the detention that was missed, and attach the evidence for every finding, so nobody on your team has to do the comparison manually. The same pass covers layover, TONU, lumper reimbursements, extra stops and rate discrepancies (see what we find). The pilot is free and needs no system access.

Sources

American Transportation Research Institute, New Research Documents Substantial Financial and Safety Impacts from Truck Driver Detention, September 10, 2024. Figures are for the United States, 2023.

US Department of Transportation, Office of Inspector General, Estimates Show Commercial Driver Detention Increases Crash Risks and Costs, but Current Data Limit Further Analysis, January 31, 2018.